He has a plan he won’t let us in on. Maybe he’s telling the truth. Maybe Mitt has discovered some mathematically feasible way to pay for gigantic tax cuts. So why wouldn’t he tell us? Well…

His plan would be wildly unpopular with moderates. Given that he’s an ultra-wealthy businessman, odds are pretty good that anything he’s got on hand wouldn’t be with the middle and lower class in mind, likely slashes to social programs and the like.

His plan would be wildly unpopular with the base. Okay, etch-a-sketch comments aside, Mitt can’t just abandon Republicans entirely in the hopes of courting the middle/left. So let’s say the only way to pay for tax cuts is via chopping away at defense spending and other GOP-friendly programs. What then? Keep a lid on it.

He’s under the impression that tax plans are intellectual property and he doesn’t want Obama stealing it. If, you know, Mitt is just completely bonkers.

He has no plan at all.Maybe he’s lying. Maybe Mitt is banking on the lie carrying him into the White House, hoping…

By the time he gets elected he’ll come up with something. We’ve all done this and you know it. You say you have a plan for something before you do (I totally know how we’ll sneak you into the concert), crossing your fingers that when it comes time to actually do it, you’ll have it set.

He can just get into the White House and not worry about it. So this one is pretty cynical, but certainly not out of the realm of possibility. Make a crazy claim with a “secret way to do it”, knowing that there’s kind of a “no backsies” policy with electing presidents, so he can just refocus on other things once in office like how Bush ran solely on an anti-terror platform in 2004 and immediately set about attempting economic reform.

Sure, you can make the observation that those are decidedly blue states, but at least in the case of Massachusetts that’s where he was friggin’ governor. We’re talking about a man who is pretty much everything one could have claimed about a typical liberal elite (Harvard educated New England politician who doesn’t drink, has a load of money and no connection to the common man), but had to completely turn his back on himself in order to court enough GOP voters elsewhere to give him a chance on the national platform.

Many of you might remember in 2000 when Gore lost, that many on the right wanted to dismiss the Florida debacle by deriding Gore for losing his home state of Tennessee, but even then it was a bit of a surprise loss. Romney’s just giving up on where his roots are, in the hopes of winning the presidency. If anything, it’s a perfect analogy for his whole strategy: abandon the Mitt Romney of X years ago and turn into whatever Mitt Romney he thinks can win in 2012. Does he actually have deeply held beliefs? I don’t know.

“Well I don’t have an announcement for you on that today … But I do believe in linking my incentives and my commitment to the accomplishment of specific goals,” Romney said. “I wish we had that happen throughout government — where people recognized they are not going to get rewarded in substantial ways unless they are able to achieve the objectives that they were elected to carry out.”

Okay let’s explain why this is an idiotic idea.

Given that Romney is a millionaire, I’d like to know how much money he’d have to get offered for him to consider it an incentive.

What happens if Congress blocks him? Who gets their paychecks hurt?

Who decides what is and isn’t worth incentive? If Romney repealed Obamacare?

Aren’t these people public servants? Shouldn’t they be running for the purposes of improving the country, rather than economic gain?

I want to put this up because I’m seeing a number of sites claiming that Romney would, blanket-style, deny anyone with a pre-existing condition health care. I don’t agree with his policy overall, but that claim just ain’t true.

With a bow toward the politics on pre-existing conditions, he said, “I don’t want [people] to be denied insurance because they’ve got some preexisting condition so we’re going to have to make sure that the law we replace Obamacare with assures that people who have a preexisting condition, who’ve been insured in the past are able to get insurance in the future so they don’t have to worry about that condition keeping them from getting the kind of health care they deserve.” Luckily, several major healthcare insurers have said the would do this voluntarily.

Again, I’ve said multiple times that the problem with American health care is that it’s privatized. However, if we’re stuck within privatized health insurance, one thing that just won’t work is forcing insurance companies to cover anyone and everyone for the simple reason that it would bankrupt them. Romney’s plan fixes a rather egregious hole in the system wherein someone might have insurance, lose it, and then be unable to get coverage later. That’s a big problem, and one that can be fixed within the current structure.

I’ve harped on this before, but the reason I’m going after it again isn’t to defend Romney, it’s to point out that the proposed solution is untenable in a privatized health care system.

We have two courses we can follow. One is to follow the pathway of Europe, to shrink our military smaller and smaller to pay for our social needs. The other is to commit to preserve America as the strongest military in the world, second to none, with no comparable power anywhere in the world. We choose that course. We choose that course for America not just so that we can win wars, but so we can prevent wars. Because a strong America is the best deterrent to war that ever has been invented.

There are so many problems with this statement it’s almost difficult to begin with.

First of all, Europe is an ally. Or at least they’re supposed to be. I have no idea why the Republican strategy seems to be to insult the entire continent whenever possible, and use the word “European” in the pejorative, as if to say that Europe is a disaster and we should avoid being like them. Then we can’t seem to figure out why they don’t want to back us up when the shit hits the fan.

Secondly, this notion that the only path toward security is throwing trillions of dollars into the military to build more tanks and bombs is such a childish view of strength I’m surprised the phrase “tree fort” didn’t Freudian slip its way in there. We’re not in the middle of the Cold War or WWII. The era of needing swarms of fighter jets and six million boots on the ground is over. Technology is advancing, and so is military strategy. In the 21st century, we’re capable of tactical bombing into someone’s toilet with our iPhones and ransacking a dictator’s HQ with a team of six.

Add in the fact that we have billions upon billions of dollars being wasted every year on projects that go nowhere and produce nothing, and the amount of money we can trim from the military budget without having a negative impact on our ability to defend ourselves is enormous. Mitt Romney’s blockheaded “WE NEED MOAR TANKS” nonsense is what someone who only cares about dick-waving says. Someone who’s less concerned with genuine capability and more concerned with being able to strut around talking about how we have more missiles than anyone else.

And finally, I don’t think I can say nearly enough how much I hate this notion that the United States is what keeps the world safe. Yes, the US had a great spurt between 1910 and 1950 where we helped win some damn big wars, but after the Cold War, Vietnam, and our Middle East adventures, it’s a safe bet that the world largely sees us like that guy who you always want on your side in a bar fight but tends to cause more problems than he helps. A rottweiler with a bad attitude that guards the house but also bites the neighbors.

Our military budget isn’t a numbers game, nor is anything else. Look at the world we live in. It’s not terrifying. There has been one significant terrorist attack on US soil in the last 20 years, and it caused about 7% as many deaths as traffic accidents that year. Since then, the worst thing Americans have had to worry about has been whether or not they’ll have a job and how much gas will cost. We’re not living in Beirut or Damascus. No one walks out of their house and goes to the store crossing their fingers that a guy wearing a TNT sweater vest will fuck up their day. Our leaders aren’t afraid of having stadium-sized rallies, because they know no one’s going to shoot at them or set off a dirty bomb. Our police aren’t worried about IEDs and we don’t need the military patrolling our streets.

Some places of the world may be unsafe, but the United States is quite safe, and wrecking our economy just to impress no one with how much we spend is a disastrous policy.

Mitt Romney is like the caricature of John Kerry (the out-of-touch elitist waffler) times ten. I know I’m not a fan of harping on gaffes, but this one’s pretty good.

I’m not familiar precisely with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was.

Addendum: updates slowed down not just due to job, but I snagged a rescue dog and he’s needed some extra TLC. I’m really trying to keep this site up and running full time, but it’s gettin’ tricky. Any of my regulars got free time and feel like writing? 😛